


Just My Type

by wyrdo



Series: Overcome by Events [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Cullen Rutherford Has Issues, Cullen has a Type, F/M, I just made crushing Cullen's thing, POV Cullen Rutherford
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-12 15:08:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11739579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyrdo/pseuds/wyrdo
Summary: Face it, Cullen.  You have a type.  And Leliana knows it.Prelude to a series of memories mostly centered in DA II





	Just My Type

**Author's Note:**

> this is a short prelude to OBE. A stupid plotbunny that led to a series of ideas for my favorite Templar and my original DA girl crush.
> 
> Also, sorry, I try to make his inner monologue sound more british, but i'm limited in my britishisms. Sorry, i mean Ferelden and Fereldenisms. :)

**Satinalia Eve, 9:42 Dragon**

Cullen sighed as the Inquisitor stared after the man she'd chosen over him.  The man who had just stormed off. He cursed the Maker again for creating the perfect woman, and placing her out of his reach.

"You are hopeless, are you not?" came the dulcet Orlesian tones of the spymaster.  A woman he'd known in passing for going on 11 years. She was a good choice of spies, actually, since he had no idea she had lingered beside him. "She is just your type, no?"

"Is it so obvious?" he asked Leliana.  He grimaced at her, rubbing the back of his neck.

"I was the Left Hand of the Divine, Commander.  I am spymaster for the largest standing army in southern Thedas. If I do not know your deepest darkest secret yet, just give me time."

"Maker," he breathed The woman was subtly scary . No one so easily mistaken for an Orlesian Princess should be so frightening. 

She laughed.  She had a beautiful tinkling laugh. Her bard training come to roost. Nobody who looked or sounded like Sister Nightingale should be so frightening. He wondered how many had underestimated her.

"Also," she said "It is quite obvious."

Cullen's blush reached his eyebrows and he put his head on the table in front of him. He then gently banged his head on the table several times, cursing his heart as well as his luck.

Cullen Stanton Rutherford had wanted nothing other than to be a Templar since he was old enough to think he knew what a Templar was.  He'd wanted to protect the weak and destroy the evil. He would have preferred to guard the Honnleath Chantry, or hunt Maleficar in obscurity until his death.  But that was not to be.

The Maker clearly hated him.

Cullen didn't understand how he kept finding himself surrounded by history in the making.  Not like the rest of Thedas, who had lived through it, but not lived it.  Cullen had lived it.  He lived it at Kinloch hold.  He lived it in Kirkwall, and now, he was living it in the crumbling ruin known as Skyhold.  The Maker's hand had thrust him into the middle of it twice, and having finally taken the hint, when Cassandra and Leliana had reached out to him he'd taken it on his own initiative to walk into history with his eyes open this time.

Fat lot of good it did him.

Cullen didn't know why he was chosen.  He didn't see how he was any better than Rylen and Lysette.  Moreover, he was significantly more damaged.  And every time he tried to suggest that they take over, whomever he was speaking to looked at him like he was a madman.  Perhaps he was.  

He knew one thing about the Maker, though.  The sunofabitch had a type. The Maker liked his women strong of will but gentle of heart.  Women who could bring down Tevinter, Save the world, one rift at a time, destroy an Archdemon using four treaties and one other Grey Warden in the midst of a civil war, and single-handedly keep a circle in the grips of a madwoman, a relatively safe place to be a child. Strong women who could, and sometimes did shoulder the concerns of their entire world and come out on top. Metaphorically speaking.

Sadly, so did Cullen.  Even more sadly, he and the Maker seemed to have the SAME type. Something that had not worked out so well for Maferath, Alistair Theirin, or himself. 

He would wonder why the maker had chosen so many elves and mages if he wasn't so busy wondering why the Maker hated him so much.

Demons with Ethelin Surana's face, still haunted his dreams, 10 years, and three nations away.  He still harbored a frequent desire to kill the King of Ferelden for letting her die in Denerim. 

Clearest in his mind were the two times that he had stood silently by while she searched his face for any sign of his feelings while he had bit his tongue and watched her walk away from him. Her slight figure hunched, first from the weight of learning her friend was a blood mage, and then from the weight of his hateful and ill conceived words.  He had not even apologized.

Her death was the final straw for him.  He took the next boat to the other side of Thedas where in his stupidity he was soon faced with an unapologetic and devout former (and he supposed current) apostate named Bethany Hawke.

Bethany would tell him that the Maker never throws more at you than you can catch.  But Bethany had apparently been one of the things the Maker had dangled before him, and then removed.

Human and Curvy where the Warden was not, he had convinced himself that she was nothing like the red-haired elf. But both had an inner strength of will. An unwillingness to accept the harshness of the world. An ability to see the bright side of any darkness, and a need to step in, to be a force for good.

Bethany had survived the fall of the Kirkwall Circle, and had she not walked out of the Gallows with her sister the day the chantry had exploded, he would have... He wasn't sure what he would have done, something just as mind-bogglingly stupid as he did at Kinloch probably.

And now, here was the Herald, another mage, and another powerful woman playing chess with the world, yet still helping those who need it. Doing her best to save the world, one person, and one great bloody rift, at a time.


End file.
